Book review: Pulitzer Prize winnner Egan pens WWII historical fiction

Published 12:00 am, Monday, September 25, 2017

Jennifer Egan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” returns with an enthralling work of historical fiction.

Jennifer Egan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” returns with an enthralling work of historical fiction.

Photo: Photo Courtesy Pieter M. Van Hattem

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“Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan

“Manhattan Beach” by Jennifer Egan

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Book review: Pulitzer Prize winnner Egan pens WWII historical fiction

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Pulitzer prize-winning author of “A Visit from the Goon Squad” (2010) Jennifer Egan brings readers a compelling, captivating story from our country’s past with “Manhattan Beach,”set in the Depression era before World War II.

Fans of Egan’s previous books and experimental approaches will be delighted at yet another unexpected approach seven years in the making — a traditional novel.

In 1934, 12-year-old Anna Kerrigan is brought along by her father, Eddie, to meet a mobster named Dexter Styles at his house.

Eddie needs a job. He is desperate for funds to purchase a wheelchair for his younger daughter Lydia, who is disabled.

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Years later, during World War II, Eddie has disappeared without a trace and 19-year-old Anna is employed at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women work while men serve as soldiers.

She is determined to become the yard’s first female diver, to work at repairing ships that could win the war.

One evening, she re-encounters Dexter Styles at a nightclub he owns. Upon learning more about him, she realizes that he may be the key to her father’s secrets and know the reason he disappeared.

Egan’s latest work has alternating narrators in Anna, Eddie and Dexter. Through each narrative, we perceive their personalities, relationships with other characters, and most crucial, their relationships with each other.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story comes when the narratives intersect, and we can see what new clues emerge and how much closer we can get to the revelation of Eddie’s fate.

It is most interesting to see Anna’s feeling towards her situation develop. She is conflicted in her attitude towards her father. She wants to know what became of him and whether or not he is still alive. However, at the same time, she wants nothing to do with him, as he abandoned their family.

The story is incredibly immersive in its imagery, especially in portions of the story that take place by the beach. There are truly poetic descriptions of the sky and sea evoking sensory imagery, but there is also a deeper vehicle about the vastness of our aspirations and what we can only begin to fathom about love and loss.

More Information

Manhattan Beach

By Jennifer Egan

Scribner, $28

This novel tackles a few other issues. Anna’s younger sister, Lydia, is severely disabled. Anna cares deeply about her sister and goes out of her way to keep her well and happy.

Eddie, on the other hand, doesn’t fully comprehend how to approach his daughter and cope with the circumstance, nor does he understand how his wife and elder daughter so readily devote themselves to looking after her.

However, he still shows signs of a kind of desire to be close to her, to begin to understand. He rejects the suggestion that he put his daughter in a nursing home and even becomes angry at these recommendations.

He is also willing to go out of his way to earn money in order to buy her a wheelchair.

This part of the novel also shows an interesting side to Anna’s character; she is mostly headstrong and ambitious throughout the story, but when she is with Lydia, she shows a softer side.

Egan manages important themes about misogyny as Anna faces mistreatment in the Naval Yard.

As she trains to be a diver, her male peers and superiors disregard her and belittle her.

Egan also underscores other important issues of that era to do with race and class and living through war.

Egan is known for being a consummate researcher. She had been devoted to accurately depicting the setting of this book.

For seventeen years, she lived near the real-life Brooklyn Navy Yard. She intensively researched this earlier era and the equipment Anna would be using in her jobs both in the shipyard and as a diver, as well as what New York would have been like in the time period.

What happened to Eddie Kerrigan? This and other mysteries that unfold in the novel help conjure a bygone era, its magic and mystery.

“Manhattan Beach” is an enthralling work of historical fiction that weaves together beautiful imagery, an immersive story, and compelling characters into a single story of family secrets and unconditional love.

Christianna L. Davies is a sophomore at Our Lady of the Lake University.